Italian, Incorporated

The Time Warner Center has been with us for more than five years. That&#x2019;s long enough for the question most asked about New York restaurants to apply to the ones found there: &#x201C;What restaurant was here before this one?&#x201D;

In the case of A Voce Columbus—I guess that refers to Columbus Circle, since it&#x2019;s not on Columbus Avenue—the answer is Café Gray, the glittery bistro of chef Gray Kunz. Back then, what everyone wanted to know about Café Gray, the initial occupant of the third-floor spot, concerned design. The picture windows overlooking Central Park were generously given over to the pleasure of the kitchen staff, while guests had to be satisfied with looking at that staff. Great concept, if you like men in white. Now it&#x2019;s a partnership: Cooks, dining room guests, and private-dining customers all get an allocation of the view.

The new A Voce is under the guidance of Missy Robbins, who came to New York late last year from Chicago&#x2019;s Spiaggia to take over the original A Voce, now renamed A Voce Madison. Her food there, to my recollection, was bold, daring, multi-faceted. I ate twice at the new A Voce Columbus, where the food is carefully crafted, skillfully plated, and conspicuously unexciting. A sign at the elevator bank in the Time Warner Center promises &#x201C;contemporary Italian cuisine inspired by seasonal and regional simplicity.&#x201D; The sign doesn&#x2019;t lie: The food is modern, the flavors minimal. It wasn&#x2019;t until I returned home from my second dinner that I realized what was nagging me: I had not smelled, seen, or tasted parmigiano-reggiano throughout my meals.

It didn&#x2019;t take me long to become puzzled by the absence of thrills. My first pasta was orecchiette (&#x201C;little ears&#x201D;) with roasted pork jowl. When I think of that particular pig part, I imagine all manner of aggressiveness: fat, smoke, salt, etc. This dish was without much of anything. I had gotten into a conversation with a fellow sitting at the next table, and I asked him to try it. His critique: &#x201C;It tastes rather…fragile.&#x201D; (I hate it when some tourist from Southern California comes up a better food description than mine.) And, I have to say, even the bread follows form. It&#x2019;s a housemade loaf that crosses Italian focaccia with American Wonder bread, and it arrives with tasteless ricotta cheese that has been sprinkled with curative herbs and chili flakes and splashed with impressive olive oil.

Puzzling in a different way were the sardines. At the Madison Avenue branch of A Voce, I recall grilled fresh sardines served atop chickpeas, a dazzlingly inventive dish. The Columbus Circle sardine presentation consisted of marinated filets of sardines much like every other marinated sardine I&#x2019;ve ever tried—acidic and strong—atop bland cubes of eggplant obliterated by the fishiness. The small pile of fish and veggies was centered in a huge plate that could have accommodated ten more portions of the same size. The dish had one virtue: At least with sardines, food can&#x2019;t be fairly described as fragile.

The dining room has been redone beautifully but unimaginatively. I&#x2019;d call it Upscale As Usual. There&#x2019;s a wall of wine racks, many shiny surfaces, white napkins, no tablecloths, and swiveling chairs that could have come from a posh boardroom. The colors are understated. The music is unobtrusive. The service is just swell—you won&#x2019;t be ignored. If you&#x2019;re wondering why I was in such close contact with the guy at the next table, it&#x2019;s inevitable. The tables for two are set close together, and they&#x2019;re so small that my bread plate was hanging over the edge. Intimacy is automatic.

The most disconcerting aspect of the dining experience is the wine list, the kind you find at Las Vegas steakhouses. The cover felt like genuine Corinthian leather. I counted fourteen wines, none of them Italian, for $4,000 and up. You want 1945 Mouton, it&#x2019;s here—listed for $14,000, which is probably $7,000 over retail. The white wines are mostly Chardonnays, the red wine section stresses Cabernet Sauvignons. Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in Piedmont anymore. The wines are impressive, although not as much as their mark-ups.

My search for Italian flavors continued with gnocchi, but these seemed to have been prepared with the same unimpressive ricotta cheese served with the bread, hence no flavor. Although menu prices aren&#x2019;t exorbitant at A Voce, the gnocchi were an exception. The dish cost $23 and consisted of 19 tiny lumps, which means $1.21 per teeny, tasteless bite. Among main courses, the branzino was pan-roasted, topped with a somewhat grainy pesto, and set atop lovely marinated heirloom tomatoes, successful but decidedly more American than Italian; lamb chops, lamb sausage, and lentils was a dreary, colorless combo, although I have to say the sausage perked me up; and the chicken, supposedly marinated in fennel and chili, was exhaustingly bland. By far the best dish I tried was an appetizer of lightly salted fresh cod with olives, tomatoes, pinenuts, and golden raisins, vivid and well-balanced. I also liked those golden raisins added to cauliflower—raisins are the most successful flavor enhancer in the house.

Donuts, as they do so often, saved the day. The A Voce bomboloni were fresh, soft, and yeasty, served with a bitter chocolate sauce that was better poured over the semifreddo, which tasted more like ice cream than the soft Italian dessert it&#x2019;s intended to be.

To me, the incongruous wine list, muted cuisine, and corporate feel of the new A Voce Columbus add up not to a sparkling new restaurant that challenges the upscale ordinariness of the Time Warner Center but to a straightforward, marketable enterprise. It might all fit in seamlessly and permanently with the commercial nature of the surroundings, or it might someday be an answer to the question, &#x201C;Wasn’t A Voce here before this restaurant?&#x201D;

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